Psychology: an elementary text-bookEbbinghaus, Hermann
Science
Psychology: an elementary text-book
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
Psychology
Not only are perceptions and images themselves sources of pleasantness
and unpleasantness, but also their relations, spatial, temporal, and
conceptual. The pleasure which we derive from looking at a picture or a
landscape illustrates the dependence on spatial relations. The pleasure
of a symphony or dramatic performance depends largely on temporal
relations. Jokes and puzzles please us chiefly because of their
conceptual, logical relations. It is plain, then, that every complex of
sensations, supplemented by a large number of images, must become a
stage, so to speak, on which countless scores of feelings play their
parts. In so far as their perceptual and ideational bases may be kept
apart, we may count as many of these feelings as we distinguish percepts
or ideas. In so far as all these feelings are either pleasantness or
unpleasantness, we may speak of the feelings as being only two in
number. This may explain to us why such mental states as love, pride,
sentimentality, the joy of the audience in a theater, the interest of
the reader of a biography, appear at once simple enough, unitary
enough, and yet inexhaustibly replete with contents and difficult of
comprehension. This also explains the opposite views of so many writers,
of whom some assert that the number of feelings is infinitely large,
others that there are only two, pleasantness and unpleasantness, which
may accompany an infinite number of sensation complexes. The difference
between these writers is much less than appears from their words.
QUESTIONS
77. How are pleasantness and unpleasantness related to sensational
states of consciousness?
78. How are pleasantness and unpleasantness related to objective
conditions?
79. How does the repetition of an experience influence its
pleasantness or unpleasantness?
80. What is the general subjective condition of pleasantness and
unpleasantness?
81. Is feeling a prophet of the future?
82. What difficulties does the existence of feeling cause the
psychologist?
83. Are there more than two feelings?
§ 7. WILLING
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